Shaky Isles Theatre presents MY INNER ORC by Allen O’Leary – A play about actors, Lord of the Rings and the fans who love them. Set in Croydon. Following sell-out performances at the Riverside Studios and the Camden Fringe, Shaky Isles Theatre return to the Pleasance for a limited two week run of Allen O’Leary’s My Inner Orc. In an affectionately satirical new play, two actors find themselves pitted against Lord of the Rings fans with plans of magic and mayhem. Model-turned-actor Karl must grow up fast and find his ‘inner orc’ to help the star and organiser of the Convention escape two over-zealous fans threatening seduction, extortion and black-mail.
O’Leary’s play took its starting point from the actors he knew who worked on Peter Jackson’s trilogy of films and came to London to capitalise on their experience at Conventions. In Rings fans he found a world of people with a sense of camaraderie, nobility and a higher purpose, attracted to the simplicity of an epic life.
Through the eyes of an innocent abroad, My Inner Orc takes an affectionately satirical look at kiwi ambition on the world stage and the personal compromises that get made on the road to success. In an increasingly globalised world, where the books of an English professor have been made into a world-wide phenomenon by a kiwi film maker, O’Leary found himself asking just where is the ‘the shire’? This green and pleasant land, this England? Or those shaky isles of Aotearoa?
Shaky Isles Artistic Director Emma Deakin, who appeared as a hobbit in the films, plays Convention Organiser Sam. “We wanted to tell a story about dreams, ambition and the reality of being a little fish in a big pond in a very a-typical way that would resonate with a UK audience,” says Deakin. “So this isn’t a ‘turn up, live in Shepherds Bush and drink in the Redback’ kind of story. This is an ‘arrive in Croydon, get taken hostage by elves,’ kind of story.”
Directed by Stella Duffy
Performed by Kane Bixley (The Lost by Thames Gate Films), Aaron Buskin, Emma Deakin (Skin Tight), Eleanor Lawrence (Channel 4’s Phone Shop), and Emma Newborn
Lighting Design by Scott Stewart
Designed by Kate Lane
By arrangement with Playmarket – www.playmarket.org.nz
WHEN: 13-24 October 2010, 7.45pm (Press Night: 13 October)
WHERE: Pleasance Theatre, Islington
TICKETS: £13.00 (£10.00 concessions)
BOXOFFICE: 020 7609 1800 or http://www.pleasance.co.uk/islington/events/my-inner-orc
